I've wanted to write about this for some time.

This is a story about a friend of mine.

She had a successful launch of a product, enough to get almost $2,000 MRR right out of the gate, as well as tons of press and praise. The launch went so well, that she dropped out of college, nearly on the spot.

Her product was really good. Really well designed, almost a point where I was jealous of her skills as a solo founder. My apps looked and worked pretty shitty, and I was like "damn, she's super legit at building products" - she's going to be very successful, very quickly.

But months went by after the launch, and she didn't seem to be making much progress.

I met up with her for the first time months after the launch (had only known her through online) and saw something that I'll never forget.

I saw fear. Fear to build. Fear to take action. Fear to move forward. Fear to do anything.

Paralyzed by fear.

She was analyzing "should I do this", "what if I do this", etc. From what I gathered, it seemed like it had been months of this analysis.

Because her products were starting to lose money, she started taking up side jobs, which were now a point of contention - every new job had issues in her life that consumed her mind.

While we talked, she was pondering questions of "am I building the right thing?". I was like... "are you kidding!?!". The only thing she needed to do was focus on this product and just keep working on it to take it to the next level. But instead, months had gone by of this analysis paralysis.

To me, she had everything. A validated product, existing paying customers that were evangelizing the product, and she personally had very strong product skills.

But for some reason, she was stuck in what, I think, was fear.

This is just my impression. I don't know the full story. But it was the overwhelming feeling I had when talking to her.

I'm not saying that this couldn't happen to me - the hardest part of when you're in something like that, is that you don't really know it.